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Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

reuters.com

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Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#971

Post by alacombe »

IgorPartola wrote: post #443
orbitur wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't be surprised if someone at some point wears a stripy outfit, and the car thinks they are a part of the road, and tries to explicitly chase them down until they are under the wheels. Or if the car suddenly decides that the road continues at a 90 degree angle off a bridge. Or that the splashes from a puddle in front is actually an oncoming car and it must swerve into the school kids crossing the perpendicular…

I am definitely not. Their version of the future is too damn bleak for me. Your fear is very much grounded in reality. US lawmakers tend to be very reactionary, except in rare cases like gun laws. So it won't take much to have restrictions imposed like this. Granted, I believe some regulation is good; after all the reason today's cars are safer than those built 20 years ago isn't because the free market decided so, b…

> US lawmakers tend to be very reactionary, except in rare cases like gun laws.

And for a good reason, they are constitutionally prohibited to .

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#972

Post by the_cat_kittles »

could there be some way of emitting a signal on your person so cars never get confused? seems like a pain in the ass, but maybe it would be worth it? cars can know for sure there are people wherever the signal is emitted from? dunno if its feasible, curious

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#973

Post by Piskvorrr »

ape4 wrote: post #806
obastani wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little of what goes into a current-generation self-driving car is based on machine learning [1]. The reason is exactly your point -- algorithmic approaches to self-driving are much safer and more predictable than a machine learning algorithms. Instead, LIDAR should exactly identify potential obstacles to the self-driving car on the road. The extent to which machine learning is used is to classify whether each ob…

Exactly, with LIDAR the logic isn't very tricky. if something in front, stop.

You're handwaving away the crux of the matter: while for a human, the condition seems straightforward (as we understand that "in front" means "in a set of locations in the near future, determined by a many-dimensional vector set", expressing this in code is nontrivial.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#974

Post by ACow_Adonis »

scottmcdot wrote: post #961
tim333 wrote: post #958

>The self-driving Volvo SUV was outfitted with at least two video cameras, one facing forward toward the street, the other focused inside the car on the driver, Moir said in an interview. >From viewing the videos, “it’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway,” Moir said. ( https://ww…

Shouldn't '[Coming] from the shadows' be irrelevant when the sensors are LIDAR?

One also needs to consider the relative dynamic range of the camera/video in terms of both sensors and playback.

If the hardware is not capable of capturing sufficient dynamic range to be able to see into the shadows while driving in daytime/nighttime in this location, one must ask why not? That seems obviously negligent.

If the car can see into the shadows (say either with lidar or sufficiently sensitive hardware) then a self driving car either just failed to identify and predict the object and subsequently killed a pedestrian, or it detected them and killed them anyway.

If it killed them anyway, it may be that it was physically impossible for them to avoid the detected object, or forensics (if properly performed) would show that the collision was avoidable.

All of these scenarios seem pretty inconsistent with the hypothesis of the police chief knowing what the duck he's taking about, and I question what the hell he's doing releasing such a statement before the evidence is in...

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#976

Post by gkya »

keypusher wrote: post #950

> Elaine Herzberg, 49, was walking her bicycle outside the crosswalk on a four-lane road in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe about 10 p.m. > Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir said that from viewing videos taken from the vehicle “it’s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway." This seems like a…

I can't describe how shocking it is watching many HN commented blame a person killed by a machine and defend the thing instead. There are even those who are saying that such deaths are necessary and useful for the advancement of technology.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#977

Post by gkya »

Johnny555 wrote: post #240
pcthrowaway wrote: post #65

The people leading the development should demonstrate that they can stop for pedestrians by personally jumping out in front of them on a closed test road. If they're not able to demonstrate this, they shouldn't be putting them on public roads.

Self driving cars are still subject to the laws of physics... unless you're going to dictate that self-driving cars never go above 15mph, I wouldn't advocate jumping in front of even a "perfect" self-driving car. Braking distance (without including any decision time) for a 15mph car is 11 ft, for a 30mph is 45 ft. Self driving cars won't change these limits. (well, they may be a little better than humans at maximizin…

What about steering away, a la ABS?

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#978

Post by wiz21c »

Aunche wrote: post #613
wiz21c wrote: post #596

There are roughly 3e8 cars in the US, they kill 3e4 people a year => each car kills 1e-4 person a year. If we have say 100 AV right now in US, each car kills 1e-2 person a year. So that's 100 times more dangerous than humans...

That's not a good comparison because self driving cars are on the road a lot more often than regular cars.

yep, sure. I did that computation to have a rough estimate. Also, with on or two fatalities, I guess the confidence in the stats is not very high.

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#979

Post by aiCeivi9 »

gaius wrote: post #146
pcthrowaway wrote: post #65

The people leading the development should demonstrate that they can stop for pedestrians by personally jumping out in front of them on a closed test road. If they're not able to demonstrate this, they shouldn't be putting them on public roads.

The ancient Romans would have the civil engineer stand under the bridge they'd just built while a Legion marched over it. That's why Roman structures are still around today!

Isn't that just survival bias? The good ones didn't collapse?

Re: Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street

#980

Post by carlmr »

pps43 wrote: post #456
orbitur wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't be surprised if someone at some point wears a stripy outfit, and the car thinks they are a part of the road, and tries to explicitly chase them down until they are under the wheels. Or if the car suddenly decides that the road continues at a 90 degree angle off a bridge. Or that the splashes from a puddle in front is actually an oncoming car and it must swerve into the school kids crossing the perpendicular…

> Are you working on the next season of Black Mirror? In Black Mirror, all cars in the world will simultaneously swerve into nearby pedestrians, buildings, or other cars.

More likely it would be something about dissidents being killed in their cars, or cars going after people who aren't liked.
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